Gabor Szabo

[Milestones]

For all his criticism of Benson, I'm curious as to why SGCIM even read his autobiography.

Then again, a few posts back he had a paragraph expressing real admiration of George Benson.  So is it the presumed Parker comparison that makes you so upset?

  

[medjuck]

  On 4/25/2008 at 9:44 PM, Bright Moments said:

 

 

 

i just enjoted this one!!

 

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Is that the one with liner notes by Nat Hentoff? 

[Daniel A]

  On 6/28/2020 at 3:38 AM, danasgoodstuff said:

As an avid history reader, sometimes the footnotes are the best part.  But seriously, I got no beef with Geo. Benson.  Got no big pile of his records either, but I got enough that I can listen to him when I feel like it and the man can certainly play.  Got no beef with Nat Cole or Wes M. either, and the're all more than footnotes to me - possibly three entries in the Why Couldn't They Make a Decent Living Playing Real Jazz chpt.  All of the afore-mentioned (and Grant and Turrentine) were, IMHO, more genuine populists than someone like Chick.

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I think it's hard to find many people who attribute great value to every album under Chick Corea's name. But as someone who is fairly familiar with his output, I do think that his efforts - misguided though they sometimes might be - are honest. He seems generally enthusiastic about playing whatever music he plays, so I wouldn't think there is that much populism involved.

Maybe, in that sense, he's not a "genuine" populist after all... 

[sgcim]

  On 6/28/2020 at 1:54 PM, Milestones said:

For all his criticism of Benson, I'm curious as to why SGCIM even read his autobiography.

Then again, a few posts back he had a paragraph expressing real admiration of George Benson.  So is it the presumed Parker comparison that makes you so upset?

  

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Yeah, it's just this bunch of raving Benson fanatics in some guitar discussion groups I belong to that insist that Benson is the living personification of Bird on the guitar, and ignoring the recordings of players like Raney and Farlow, who were actually present on 52nd St., and would spend every night they could hearing him live and incorporate all of his ideas into their playing. That is the core of my "Upsetment". As Jim said, only a recording of Schoenberg's "Op.24, Seranade for Septet and Baritone Voice" produced by Q. and featuring Bad Benson playing the guitar part would quell my upsetment. Here is an example of Johnny Smith playing it under Mitropoulos:

 

  On 6/28/2020 at 1:48 AM, JSngry said:

Dude, Joe Farrell would play anything that paid. Anything. Why are you surprised at that?

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He had to feed the nose....

[mjzee]

I had never heard this Schoenberg before (I never want to hear it again, but that's another story).  But I was intrigued by the back story and did a Web search.  I found this; start with the section "Schoenberg's Seranade" (yes, it's misspelled):

http://preparedguitar.blogspot.com/2014/12/johnny-smith-interview.html

[Teasing the Korean]

Why the hell are we talking about George Benson in a Gabor Szabo thread?  They have nothing to do with each other.  George Benson's aesthetics, or lack thereof, have nothing to do with Gabor's contributions to 1960s grooviness. 

[danasgoodstuff]

  On 6/28/2020 at 4:27 PM, Daniel A said:

I think it's hard to find many people who attribute great value to every album under Chick Corea's name. But as someone who is fairly familiar with his output, I do think that his efforts - misguided though they sometimes might be - are honest. He seems generally enthusiastic about playing whatever music he plays, so I wouldn't think there is that much populism involved.

Maybe, in that sense, he's not a "genuine" populist after all... 

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My problem with Chick deciding (after Circle and Miles) that he want to play in a more 'for the people' vein wasn't that it was dishonest, it was just clueless.  The others mentioned had some familiarity with and genuine appreciation for things that actually were popular in their time, Chick just guessed.  He's said so, as JSngry mentioned.  Gabor made a sort of populist move, only earlier and in a decidedly different way than Benson.  Gabor's stuff is only kind of interesting to me, but I may yet change my mind.

[Milestones]

Yeah, a lot of talk of Benson and now Corea.  Just goes to show the winding nature of a thread.

Whatever else you wish to say about Corea, the man is eclectic.  I've enjoyed various trios (especially with Vitous and Haynes), the duo with Burton, Origin, the latin stuff, some of the electric stuff--and that's just scratching the surface.

[medjuck]

  On 6/29/2020 at 3:57 AM, danasgoodstuff said:

My problem with Chick deciding (after Circle and Miles) that he want to play in a more 'for the people' vein wasn't that it was dishonest, it was just clueless.  The others mentioned had some familiarity with and genuine appreciation for things that actually were popular in their time, Chick just guessed.  He's said so, as JSngry mentioned.  Gabor made a sort of populist move, only earlier and in a decidedly different way than Benson.  Gabor's stuff is only kind of interesting to me, but I may yet change my mind.

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What Chick albums were his populist ones? Who was in the group? 

[danasgoodstuff]

  On 6/29/2020 at 4:16 PM, medjuck said:

What Chick albums were his populist ones? Who was in the group? 

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Return to Forever, more so mk.2 (Dimeola) than mk.1(Farrell).  And off and on after than, to varying degrees.

[JSngry]

The whole RTF thing was explicitly about "communicating", even the first iteration with flora. But when it get "electric", especially when it was DiMeola bringing the...whatever....that stuff largely sounded silly to me then, and it still does today.

[danasgoodstuff]

  On 6/29/2020 at 4:22 PM, JSngry said:

The whole RTF thing was explicitly about "communicating", even the first iteration with flora. But when it get "electric", especially when it was DiMeola bringing the...whatever....that stuff largely sounded silly to me then, and it still does today.

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Absolutely, although the sci-fi references may have been silly to you and I they tapped into the public's love of genre fiction in a way that was of its time and connected them to prog- but while a RTF/Rush cross might have genuinely spoken to some people, I wouldn't be in that group.  But I'm not sure how deep any of that was for Corea, or if it was just a vague gesture towards something he felt he should do, without thinking it through to any degree past 'hey, lets communicate!'.  Some of Szabo's work seems nearly as superficial in its gestures towards world music, but I don't know it as well AND lots of worthwhile art has been inspired by philosophic phluff that doesn't even begin to stand up to scrutiny so...?  If dilatants actually understood the cultures they raid, they might make even less interesting music.   I certainly have no deep understanding of raga, and if I wanted such I wouldn't look to Szabo to get it, or to Corea for jazz engaging deeply with the popular music of his day.  Grant and George and Stanley T. all, IMHO, actually understood R&B, etc. pretty darn well.  YMMV.

[medjuck]

  On 6/29/2020 at 4:22 PM, danasgoodstuff said:

Return to Forever, more so mk.2 (Dimeola) than mk.1(Farrell).  And off and on after than, to varying degrees.

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Oh, I didn't know that. I think I never heard them and always presumed they were like Weather Report (who's work  I wasn't that familiar with either). 

[JSngry]

Oh, Weather Report was not just populist, the were freaking organic.

[Milestones]

I would say RTF was popular in some sense, such as simply having a decent-sized audience. Chick returned to touring and live records with the band about a decade ago.

 

[sgcim]

  On 6/29/2020 at 2:37 AM, Teasing the Korean said:

Why the hell are we talking about George Benson in a Gabor Szabo thread?  They have nothing to do with each other.  George Benson's aesthetics, or lack thereof, have nothing to do with Gabor's contributions to 1960s grooviness. 

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Gabor claimed Bad Benson ripped him off on his monster hit of Breezin'- we held a Kangaroo Court and sentenced him to having to play some awful Schoenberg piece.

Harsh punishment no doubt, but it fits the crime.

[Teasing the Korean]

  On 6/29/2020 at 8:30 PM, sgcim said:

Gabor claimed Bad Benson ripped him off on his monster hit of Breezin'- we held a Kangaroo Court and sentenced him to having to play some awful Schoenberg piece.

Harsh punishment no doubt, but it fits the crime.

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I guess with Gabor, I check out before he would even dream of writing something that sounds like "Breezin'".  The Gabor that I know and love is all about sitars, vespas, and 1960s international jet set grooviness.   

[gvopedz]

Here is a Lena Horne video that some people say shows Gabor Szabo playing guitar in the background.  Can anyone confirm that it is Szabo?  The two recorded an album together in 1969.

 

 

[sgcim]

  On 6/29/2020 at 11:40 PM, gvopedz said:

Here is a Lena Horne video that some people say shows Gabor Szabo playing guitar in the background.  Can anyone confirm that it is Szabo?  The two recorded an album together in 1969.

 

 

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Yeah that's him.

[Daniel A]

  On 6/29/2020 at 4:22 PM, danasgoodstuff said:

Return to Forever, more so mk.2 (Dimeola) than mk.1(Farrell).  And off and on after than, to varying degrees.

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Even if they were "populist" to any degree, the first two RTF albums are so brilliant that I don't really care. Honest, clueless and brilliant. 🙂 

[JSngry]

If by the 1st two RTF albums, you mean the ones with Flora, then yeah.

 

[danasgoodstuff]

  On 6/30/2020 at 12:43 PM, Daniel A said:

Even if they were "populist" to any degree, the first two RTF albums are so brilliant that I don't really care. Honest, clueless and brilliant. 🙂 

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First two are lovely, some of the related work even more so, I meant 'populist' as a descriptive not a pejorative.  Later RTF I have little use for but YMMV and that's fine.

[JSngry]

Oh, those first two were anything but clueless. Chick's years with Getz served him very well, and his sudden impulse towards "tunefulness" resulted in an inspired output.

It's when he decided to go with the guitar and get all "fusion" about it that got worse and worse with every effort, it seemed to me. Prog-rock with no idea of what the "rock" part of it was, although to be fair, a LOT of people who got into that stuff didn't see it that way.

[jazzbo]

I liked the first of these, "Hymn to the Seventh Galaxy" .. . After Connors left, not so much. BUT it allowed him to make a name and move onto the next phase. I honestly think at that time it was anyone's guess what was really "popular" or "populist" as there were so many different flavors and forms out there. I know my listening was all over the place til the end of the 'Seventies when I started to play drums and played rock, but collected jazz and practiced jazz drumming.

[Guy Berger]

  On 6/30/2020 at 5:30 PM, jazzbo said:

I liked the first of these, "Hymn to the Seventh Galaxy" .. . After Connors left, not so much. BUT it allowed him to make a name and move onto the next phase. I honestly think at that time it was anyone's guess what was really "popular" or "populist" as there were so many different flavors and forms out there. I know my listening was all over the place til the end of the 'Seventies when I started to play drums and played rock, but collected jazz and practiced jazz drumming.

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Same.  HttSG is a very nice album.  High quality "guitar fusion".

The Al DiMeola albums are generally cheesier, and much more formulaic, though they have their moments.